


Choke on Guilt, That’s Far Too Good For You. Say One Word I’ll Laugh And Bury You

by mxmaelstrom



Category: The Last of Us (Video Games), The Last of Us Part Two - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Guilt, Survivor Guilt, for like one sentence, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29565012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mxmaelstrom/pseuds/mxmaelstrom
Summary: ‘Everything is somehow worse when it should have all got better, and it puts fresh pain in her chest that she’ll never share, the confusion just digging it deeper, giving it barbs so it can’t leave her. She’ll never be able to get away from it, but she’ll never be able to share it either.’Abby has a lot of shit to unpack
Kudos: 6





	Choke on Guilt, That’s Far Too Good For You. Say One Word I’ll Laugh And Bury You

**Author's Note:**

> Title from As Heaven is Wide by Garbage.
> 
> Hi here’s some angsty stuff that’s been ratting round my brain for a couple months after rewatching a playthrough of the game and associating the lyric with Abby

Owen’s smile is cheeky and mournful all at once.

“You don’t deserve one.”

_ Did I ever? _

Abby lets it go, because there’s so much she could say, and there’s so little time between them, but the void is huge. The words burn in her mind like a brand, choking her like she’s breathing spores, but she changes the subject. Owen isn't the man she fell in love with anymore, and she isn’t the woman he fell in love with. Maybe she never was.

That wasn’t easy to square with, but nothing ever seemed to be. Every time it seemed like things would be easier, they only ever got harder, and each of her sins piled on top of the last until she thought she’d be buried under them.

Mel is different, though.

Pretty, pliant Mel, with her quiet dignity and unending patience, is the opposite of Abby. A doctor, not a soldier; a saviour, not a killer (except of Scars, but they don’t count as people, not really); and kind instead of harsh, selfless instead of selfish. She is everything Abby isn’t, though Abby stopped being jealous over it years ago.

Mel isn’t soft, exactly, because this world doesn’t allow for soft people, but she’s the closest any of them could ever come to soft, and Abby has long ago stopped begrudging Owen for choosing Mel over her. Any pain she feels at how he loves Mel more than he ever loved her is just another blow, and she likes to think she’s suffered enough to become numb to them.

And the news she has now will either justify Owen, or put an end to her longing for revenge. She hopes it will do only the latter, but things are never that simple, and the girl she used to be died when she saw her father’s body.

Joel dies, and nothing seems easier.

The burden in her chest seems lighter, yes, but Mel is more distant and judging that she usually is, and Owen and Danny and Jordan are looking at her like she isn’t one of them any longer, and it makes her feel so cold she can’t even feel numb, like things have changed and won't ever be the same again. Manny is the only one who treats her like he did before, and she’s pathetically glad of that, if only because they share a bedroom and that would make it all unbearable, but she takes that boon and holds it close all the same like she’s only receiving what was her due.

Everything is somehow worse when it should have all got better, and it puts fresh pain in her chest that she’ll never share, the confusion just digging it deeper, giving it barbs so it can’t leave her. She’ll never be able to get away from it, but she’ll never be able to share it either.

The memory of her mother comes back to her in dribs and drabs; a permanent sneer borne from disappointment, bitterness carved into the valleys of her face where laugh lines once traced, and hair so prematurely gray it matched her breath in the air of their freezing apartment in the Chicago quarantine zone, before Abby left to join her father. The memory is no comfort, but she doesn’t deserve comfort, so she shoulders it as best she can. 

Mel keeps things awkward and distant like she plans to always do, but Danny and Jordan ease up again. Seattle helps them unwind, and they both wind up killing Scars even more brutally than Abby killed Joel, and Joel killed her father, so them holding Jackson against her wouldn’t be fair. Danny and Jordan might be many things, but unfair wasn’t one of them, and they at least can try to understand her pain.

What she showed to them.

Owen might hold it against her, but he was picking up the open assignments she didn’t, and they could dance around each other easily. It felt horribly practiced, even though there was none, even after he dumped her for Mel, and she could laugh or cry at it all if she wanted to admit that vulnerability to anyone.

She wouldn't.

She couldn’t.

And maybe that was why he chose Mel over her.

She shook her head, refusing to go down that path before bed. There was no point fussing over it. What’s done is done, and over a year in the past. She was happy for them both. Truly happy, even if neither of them would believe it.

He begged her to run away with him and Mel, all the way to California, but she couldn’t. She might be harsh, but she wasn’t cruel, and Mel already hated her.

And she didn’t think she could handle living each day with someone she now knew hated her. How Mel had managed to hide it for so long Abby would never know, because she didn’t do subterfuge, she couldn’t, and this was all going to haunt her forever, wasn’t it? She couldn’t go back to base, not since Isaac knew she’d disobeyed him, but she couldn’t go to California either.

Salt Lake was the only place left for her, and there was nothing there anymore, just an abandoned city and her father’s grave.

Yara might have said that Mel was wrong, but she didn’t know her, not really. It was empty words meant to console, but Abby had settled with that long ago.

If you could mark disappointment like a notch in your bedpost, her bed would surely fall down.

Mel would just call that unnecessary martyrdom, if she cared to name it anything at all.

Abby hates how Mel lives in her head, narrating and chastising her every move. When the fuck did Mel become her inner voice?

_ I’ll do better, _ she vows.

She knows she won’t.

Then they were all dead, she the only survivor of the Salt Lake Crew, and what a bitter fucking thing that was; the whole lot of them dead because of her whilst she survives when she was the only one who didn’t deserve to still be breathing. She might have changed that if she was alone, but she wasn’t, not anymore.

Lev was so innocent and soft in a way Abby hadn’t believed existed anymore, so she’d taken him to California.

Maybe Owen’s dream would wash her slate clean, and she could be a better person in a new place; lay all her ghosts to rest and finally move on.

Lev was only eleven years younger than her, but she felt like more his mother at times than a companion. She’d noticed that on the way to Santa Barbara, but it wasn’t until the Rattlers that she truly realised the extent of that emotion.

So once they were free she threw herself into caring for him, raising him to be better than she ever was.

Every person she’d met who’d ever raised a child had told her it was a thankless task, but Abby never felt that way. He was temperamental and moody at times, but she made sure to keep them communicating with each other, swallowing down any frustration until they could talk evenly and calmly. It made for better companionship than she had thought possible, days on the boat towards Catalina Island not as long as she’d half-feared they could be. 

Learning the truth about Joel hit her harder than she’d thought possible.

James had been in Tommy’s squad, before Tommy had left. It had been nearly twenty since he’d seen him, but he remembered Tommy well enough.

“The Lone Ranger. Well, he wasn’t always alone, but he did well that way, and he was from Texas. He’s an old one now if he’s still alive, a grown man back during the Outbreak. He had a brother. Joe, or Joel, or something. The brother had a little girl. She was killed by Fedra. In her dad’s arms, to hear Tommy say it. Then Joel escorted the immune girl across the country. From Boston to Salt Lake. He was always a hard one, but… Eh. He grew soft, or so Tompkins said. Thought of the immune girl like she was his own daughter. Apparently cared enough to doom the whole fucking world.” James spat on the ground casually like he didn’t care. Abby just felt cold.

“He killed my dad,” she said numbly.

James gave her a sharp look, head snapping up at her. She tried not to squirm under his gaze. “So you killed him,” he said softly.

“And Ellie tried to kill me,” Abby replied, equally soft. “Twice.”

James snorted and scuffed the ground with his boot, finally breaking eye contact. “An eye for an eye.”

Abby released a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding. An eye for an eye, and now they were even.

Her shoulders seemed lighter at the thought.

She’d been on the island for six months, and hadn’t been able to put her past behind her. Maybe she could now.

She smiled. 

**Author's Note:**

> My tumblr is mxmaelstrom if ya wanna yell at me


End file.
